Empower women to revive economy, says economist

Women empowerment is key to economic growth, an environmental economist has said.

“Today the cost of living is very high and only the micro-finance sector continues to sustain this economy. Women enterprises are the best way to go because of its immediate trickle-down effect,” Dr Spencer Kenyi said.

“It is difficult to document informal economy and that is what we are currently doing, we need to need to formalise our ways of conducting business. There must be systems in place for monitoring economic growth and this cannot be achieved with informal systems,” Dr Spencer stated.

He urged the government to press on with economic diversification by reinvesting oil-revenues into other sectors of the economy.

Dr Spencer said diversification of the oil sector could as well be very beneficial if the oil resources are well exhausted.

He said the establishment of the National Revenue Authority was a step in the right direction because it sought to streamline operations of the non-oil revenue sector.

Dr Spencer cautioned against the culture of importing almost everything from neighbouring countries, saying it exposes the country’s economy to lots of challenges.

“It is sad that we are importing everything including fish from Lake Victoria when we have a lot of fish dying of old age in places like Terekeka,” Dr Spencer said.

He reiterated that the closure of the South Sudan Breweries Limited was a part of the major contributing factors to the economy’s poor performance.

The shutdown, he said resulted in massive job losses besides hurting an already “hyper” inflated economy.

Dr Spencer said the would-be constituted government to set up several professional training institutions such as teachers’ training institutions, technical schools and village polytechnics.

“We should also think of establishing a Petroleum Engineering University where a course like Petroleum Chemical Sciences is taught. We need to have local experts so that we can fully explore oil related resources to boost this economy,” he said.

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